If this is true (which I am absolutely not sure about), then Goffman is the first victim of SJMR's cabal of vultures. Congratulations gentlemen. Goffman is a good ethnographer. She responded publicly to the few critics that had the dignity to name themselves. Some responses were more convincing than others - nothing unusual in academic life. She responded in an internal memo to her department to the cowards who criticized her anonymously, and the department (as well as an independent journalist who read the memo) confirmed it was satisfying. Goffman's second project (which I heard her talk about) is promising and the fact that it is not out yet is not uncommon to an ethnographer who spends several years in each field.

The rumor above strikes me as yet another attack of Goffman from a childish, know-it-all-know-nothing graduate student. But if it is true, it reflects the weakness of a department that cannot distinguish between online trolling and serious academic conversations. A very sad reflection on our discipline indeed.

If this is true, it is because Goffman fell victim to the rush of publicity and rode that wave for nearly a decade without even publishing a s**tty methods piece. She's not the visionary that you or she thinks she is.

Sorry, she’s not the victim here. Her responses, imo, actually made things worse. They were terrible responses.

No other person at a R1 would be granted tenure if they hadn’t published anything besides the article that got them hired and the book. If she was granted tenure, it would have been on the basis of her last name

I knew that Goffman's Strange Defenders would be riding into SJMR Town ASAP when they saw this thread.

For years now, we productive sociologists have been asserting that her record at UW was unworthy of tenure, and for years the GSDs have been stridently proclaiming that her tenure was guaranteed and that our concerns about ethics, fairness, and productivity in a competitive academic environment were merely sour grapes coming from jealous losers.

I don't know if OP is correct -- it's likely that no one here does -- but it was almost inevitable that, presented with evidence that we were right and that they were wrong, Goffman's Strange Defenders would turn on a dime and blame her ultimate failure not on her own troubling record but instead on us, a group of people on an anonymous internet page.

But guess what, 76e2? We don't sit on the committee, and it's doubtful that the university T&P committee visits this website.

I'll wait until we learn more before drawing any strong conclusions. As always, I'm just here to talk about Goffman.

If true, this seems consistent with much of her time in graduate school being spent hanging out with a boyfriend, faking notes and writing a fictitious book. The book was interesting but received well deserved push-back. Thus the approach of creative note taking was not open for a second book and 3-4 years of her life that should have been spent thinking through original ideas regarding race, criminality, etc. were wasted. She was left fundamentally unprepared for serious R1 research. She'll end up as some trendy over-priced liberal arts college out east. Williams or Mount Holyoke are good bets.

Just because others (hi, Sudhir) have gotten away with similar stunts doesn't mean that AG deserves tenure at Wisconsin. Fabrications, falsifications, denials, ethical collapses, etc. are all fair game to deny someone tenure.